The battle between Call of Duty and Battlefield heated up significantly last week when each franchise revealed new upcoming games, complete with an accompanying announcement trailer.
Then something interesting happened. From the get-go, the reception to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has been pretty negative. Many fans are tired of the game's sci-fi focus, the trailer wasn't all that impressive and plenty of players are angry about Activision not selling Modern Warfare Remastered outside of Infinite Warfare's expensive special editions.
So when the video began receiving a large number of dislikes on YouTube, it seemed to make perfect sense. When the Battlefield 1 trailer dropped a few days later, it also made sense that the trailer for EA's new game would find success. Rapidly the video's number of likes (and views in general) soared past that of the Infinite Warfare trailer, almost as if Call of Duty fans were taking revenge on Activision.
That was last week. Fast forward a few days later, and things have escalated even further. The number of dislikes on the Infinite Warfare trailer have increased exponentially, currently sitting at more than 1.5 million. Meanwhile, the Battlefield 1 trailer's likes have also seen a huge jump, at more than 1.1 million likes. It's also worth noting that despite the Battlefield trailer arriving a full five days after that of Infinite Warfare, the Battlefield 1 trailer currently has 4 million more views than that of the latest Call of Duty.
What the heck is going on? While the dislike campaign against Call of Duty originally appeared to be fans voicing their displeasure, the further escalation of the YouTube conflict seems to imply that something more nefarious may be going on. As pointed out by Forbes, the huge numbers these trailers are putting up in the like and dislike categories seem to point at some kind of automated bot campaign that periodically likes and dislikes these videos. It's simply hard to believe that Battlefield 1 could gain 1 million likes in less than four days. That's far beyond normal for even the most popular YouTube videos.
Perhaps Activision (or YouTube, for that matter) will look into the whole scenario more closely. The likes on the Battlefield trailer continue to come in at around three or four likes every few seconds, while the number of dislikes on Infinite Warfare's continues to jump up by 20 every few seconds or so. There has to be something more going on than just upset fans, and somebody needs to figure out what exactly it is.
